Watchdog

No kudos? Well then I won't ID her or her dog. Pretty amazing woman. Came to dominate a man's world.

http://www.iditarod.com/learn/susanbutcher.html

What the hell are you doing up so early Charlie???

That's Rick Swenson's girlfriend, right?

I specifically ban CC and I-505, so they are the first two to comment. Sigh.

I didn't say who she was!!!!!

Fact is,,,,Swenson couldn't stand her.

Because I have four sisters, gender equity was hammered into me at an early age. But I always had the feeling Rick thought Susan should be back home cooking or cleaning or something. Meanwhile, she was driving her dogs like nobody's business through the wilds of Alaska. Too bad she is no longer with us.

Getting up early is one of my habits that could be considered good. Getting up early and reading this blog could not, but I suppose if it starts to interfere with normal living I could always unsubscribe to the invasive RSS feed. But we're not there yet.

Is it Susan Butcher? Alaska "where the men are men abd the women win the Iditarod". How many dogs die in this race?

"But I always had the feeling Rick thought Susan should be back home cooking or cleaning or something."

Certainly, that was probably part of it.
I had a boss in ANC who always hosted Emmitt Peters and his dogs when they came to town. Story I heard was that there was a general antipathy towards her cuz she didn't follow the "unwritten rules" on the trail. Taking the lead (her turn) in breaking trail coming out of checkpoints (I guess the Nascar term would be that she was a "drafter"), sharing food when necessary etc etc.
And like many women who tried to break the glass ceiling in those days, she was resented for playing the "women's card" from time to time.

There is no doubt that Susan's impact on the Iditarod was immense and her contributions were numerous.
But from what I heard....and this is strictly hearsay...there was a a loud cheer that went up and a lot of snickering among mushers when Libby Riddles became the FIRST woman to win the Iditarod in 1985.

In any event, there is no shame in considering or even calling Susan Butcher the Ty Cobb of the sled dog world.

Here ya go Jim A....

http://www.helpsleddogs.org/faq.htm#1

Read it and shed a PETA tear.
Just know that far more dogs are DELIBERATELY destroyed in one day in the pounds across America than have accidentally died in a century of sled dog racing.

Well, this post has taken a strange turn. But I guess technically Jim Clark is the winner.

Speaking of strange turns, did I tell you that when the Iditarodders turned off of 4th Ave onto Cordova Street, they ran right by the first house my wife and I lived in on East 10th.

And Jim's post reminded me of the first sled dog race I went to in Alaska. I was watching with fascination because the dogs were going nuts and could hardly wait to race. They acted as if they loved what they were doing. I asked one of the mushers about it and he said his dogs were a team of athletes that loved to compete. Aha, I said, suddenly being able to relate.

Meanwhile, the races I saw were sprints. The Iditarod is a crazy, multi-week thing. But most of the dogs are very happy competing. That some get hurt and die is unfortunate.

Alas, I must admit it is pretty cozy at the top of the food chain, what with opposable thumbs and all.

"...they ran right by the first house my wife and I lived in on East 10th."

Nothing like sitting outside your house in the sculptured ice rocker on a 10 below Saturday morning in February with a "hot toddy" watching the dogs run by, eh Charlie?
Chewing on reindeer sausage or popping open jars of pickled salmon?
Occasionally step inside and dip into the crockpot of Swedish mooseballs?
People in the Lower 48 (eh, maybe in Green Bay) had no idea what real tailgating was like.

Who are all you people and where did you come from?

Im Jason. Originally from East Northport. Now living in Billerica MA,

And enjoy your blog immensely... not just because you went to Npt. High School.

Let's hope added costs bring about the speedy demise of the Iditarod. This race is terribly cruel to dogs. For the facts, visit the Sled Dog Action Coalition website, http://www.helpsleddogs.org.

Here's a short list of what happens to the dogs during the race: death, paralysis, frostbite of the penis and scrotum, bleeding ulcers, bloody diarrhea, lung damage, pneumonia, ruptured discs, viral diseases, broken bones, torn muscles and tendons, vomiting, hypothermia, sprains, fur loss, broken teeth, torn footpads and anemia.

At least 136 dogs have died in the Iditarod. There is no official count of dog deaths available for the race's early years. In "WinterDance: the Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod," a nonfiction book, Gary Paulsen describes witnessing an Iditarod musher brutally kicking a dog to death during the race. He wrote, "All the time he was kicking the dog. Not with the imprecision of anger, the kicks, not kicks to match his rage but aimed, clinical vicious kicks. Kicks meant to hurt deeply, to cause serious injury. Kicks meant to kill."

Causes of death have also included strangulation in towlines, internal hemorrhaging after being gouged by a sled, liver injury, heart failure, and pneumonia. "Sudden death" and "external myopathy," a fatal condition in which a dog's muscles and organs deteriorate during extreme or prolonged exercise, have also occurred. The 1976 Iditarod winner, Jerry Riley, was accused of striking his dog with a snow hook (a large, sharp and heavy metal claw). In 1996, one of Rick Swenson's dogs died while he mushed his team through waist-deep water and ice. The Iditarod Trail Committee banned both mushers from the race but later reinstated them. In many states these incidents would be considered animal cruelty. Swenson is now on the Iditarod Board of Directors.

In the 2001 Iditarod, a sick dog was sent to a prison to be cared for by inmates and received no veterinary care. He was chained up in the cold and died. Another dog died by suffocating on his own vomit.

No one knows how many dogs die in training or after the race each year.

On average, 52 percent of the dogs who start the race do not make it across the finish line. According to a report published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, of those who do cross, 81 percent have lung damage. A report published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine said that 61 percent of the dogs who finish the Iditarod have ulcers versus zero percent pre-race.

Tom Classen, retired Air Force colonel and Alaskan resident for over 40 years, tells us that the dogs are beaten into submission:

"They've had the hell beaten out of them." "You don't just whisper into their ears, ‘OK, stand there until I tell you to run like the devil.' They understand one thing: a beating. These dogs are beaten into submission the same way elephants are trained for a circus. The mushers will deny it. And you know what? They are all lying." -USA Today, March 3, 2000 in Jon Saraceno's column

Beatings and whippings are common. Jim Welch says in his book Speed Mushing Manual, "I heard one highly respected [sled dog] driver once state that "‘Alaskans like the kind of dog they can beat on.'" "Nagging a dog team is cruel and ineffective...A training device such as a whip is not cruel at all but is effective." "It is a common training device in use among dog mushers...A whip is a very humane training tool."

During the 2007 Iditarod, eyewitnesses reported that musher Ramy Brooks kicked, punched and beat his dogs with a ski pole and a chain. Brooks admitted to hitting his dogs with a wooden trail marker when they refused to run. The Iditarod Trail Committee suspended Brooks for two years, but only for the actions he admitted. By ignoring eyewitness accounts, the Iditarod encouraged animal abuse. When mushers know that eyewitness accounts will be disregarded, they are more likely to hurt their dogs and lie about it later.

Mushers believe in "culling" or killing unwanted dogs, including puppies. Many dogs who are permanently disabled in the Iditarod, or who are unwanted for any reason, are killed with a shot to the head, dragged or clubbed to death. "On-going cruelty is the law of many dog lots. Dogs are clubbed with baseball bats and if they don't pull are dragged to death in harnesses....." wrote Alaskan Mike Cranford in an article for Alaska's Bush Blade Newspaper (March, 2000).

Jon Saraceno wrote in his March 3, 2000 column in USA Today, "He [Colonel Tom Classen] confirmed dog beatings and far worse. Like starving dogs to maintain their most advantageous racing weight. Skinning them to make mittens. Or dragging them to their death."

The Iditarod, with its history of abuse, could not be legally held in many states, because doing so would violate animal cruelty laws.

Iditarod administrators promote the race as a commemoration of sled dogs saving the children of Nome by bringing diphtheria serum from Anchorage in 1925. However, the co-founder of the Iditarod, Dorothy Page, said the race was not established to honor the sled drivers and dogs who carried the serum. In fact, 600 miles of this serum delivery was done by train and the other half was done by dogs running in relays, with no dog running over 100 miles. This isn't anything like the Iditarod.

The race has led to the proliferation of horrific dog kennels in which the dogs are treated very cruelly. Many kennels have over 100 dogs and some have as many as 200. It is standard for the dogs to spend their entire lives outside tethered to metal chains that can be as short as four feet long. In 1997 the United States Department of Agriculture determined that the tethering of dogs was inhumane and not in the animals' best interests. The chaining of dogs as a primary means of enclosure is prohibited in all cases where federal law applies. A dog who is permanently tethered is forced to urinate and defecate where he sleeps, which conflicts with his natural instinct to eliminate away from his living area.

Iditarod dogs are prisoners of abuse.

Sincerely,
Margery Glickman
Director
Sled Dog Action Coalition, http://www.helpsleddogs.org